


Sad Machine

by platonicharmonics



Series: In The Shape Of Longing [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Trans Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-12 00:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10477599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonicharmonics/pseuds/platonicharmonics
Summary: Coran’s brow lowered. “Shiro, you are not broken. If the Galra had broken you, you’d be serving them right now, but you’re not. Youbent. You are not the same man as you were before, and there’s no way for you to go back, but son, you have to recognize that what you’ve done and the things you’ve survived make you who you are now. Allura and I do not expect you to be the avatar of the perfect Black Paladin. We expect you to beShiro. We trust and love you because we know that you care – about Voltron, about the kids, about the people of the universe, and that’sall we ask. If you still doubt your worth as a Paladin, reach out to Black right now and see how she feels.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Half cope fic, half headcanon dump. Also, I've just... desperately wanted Shiro to have a complete breakdown and be allowed to _grieve_.

He felt the impact shudder down the metal of his prosthetic into the base of his arm, heard the wet squelch of torn skin and torn flesh, felt the hot liquid burning drip and run down his skin, saw the reflection of his face in the black orbs of their wide eyes.

He couldn’t move. Their weight was on top of him, their jaws were still framing his throat and he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t want to breathe. Their blood was pooling, soaking through his clothes and into his skin, burning him alive. They smiled when they died.

He screamed and thrashed, pushing their body off of him, and ripped his glowing hand out of their torso. It left a crater of shattered bone and sinew, and he couldn’t see any other color but red, red, red.

He wanted to stay with them – he wanted to stay but he didn’t deserve to, _he did this_ , he did this and they were dead, the arena rumbled with the screamed chanting of _Champion, Champion_ , drowning out his whimpers of _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ , so he ran.

His feet slipped in the bloodied sand and he fell into a wall of metal. His right arm was still burning but the rest of him was suddenly cold; the sand was cold and hard and smooth and didn’t slide when he kicked his way back onto his feet, and when he turned around his vision blacked out and swam until he saw a bedroom, dark and silent and still.

It was like he was lagging, stretched between two locations at once. His ears were ringing with the force of the scratching voices of the crowd and his clean skin was caked with dried phantom blood and sand. He stumbled his way into the attached bathroom and into the shower, not bothering to close the door before turning the cold knob to full blast.

Three jets of freezing water splashed over his body. He couldn’t really feel it. By the time the sensation of sand and blood went away, his pajamas were soaked all the way through and his skin was left pale and covered in gooseflesh. He turned the knob off and stepped mechanically onto the slick floor and half-slid over to the mirror. He caught himself with his left hand on the counter and looked up. He didn’t recognize the reflection.

He didn’t know where he was.

Was any of this real?

He walked out the door and kept walking, leaving the bedroom behind to wander the hallway. The cold silver metal and soft teal lights weren’t Galran and they weren’t human, so he kept walking. He needed something to focus on, something that could bring him back to himself, something like a knife. 

His body took him down a side hallway and down a flight of stairs that led to a kitchen. He tried all of the drawers, but they were either locked and sealed shut or their contents were useless. He tried the cabinets next, then opened the freezer drawer; the gusts of frigid air gusted over his skin like a million needles and snatched hold of most of his senses, and there, nestled in the corner, was ice. He grabbed a fistful and shouldered the door shut, sliding down to the floor. He lifted his foot and grabbed his pant-leg with his teeth, pulled it up to his thigh, then hurriedly pushed the ice against his skin. 

He hissed at the sharp pain where it made contact, bolting up both his leg and his arm through his torso and into his head. After a minute, he slowly rubbed it across the soft flesh under his knee, forcing deep breaths through his chattering teeth. When the ice finally melted, he closed his eyes and slumped.

After a few minutes of hitched breathing and listening to the noise of his teeth banging against each other with the force of his shivering, he opened his eyes and took stock. He was in the Castle’s kitchen. He wasn’t wearing his prosthetic. He was barefoot, wearing his sleeping pants and compression shirt, which were soaked though. He was wet, cold, and in pain. And he was a monster.

He remembered them. He remembered all of them. Every alien, every _person_ he killed in that cursed arena. When the druids took his hand and forced the prosthetic onto him, it was all he was allowed. It was impossible to debilitate them. He killed so many after that. Too many.

Hot tears welled in his eyes and spilled over his cheeks. He yanked his pant leg down, then pulled his knees to his chest and sobbed, tucking his arm between his stomach and his thighs. Scars raked and slashed and crisscrossed up and down his arm, his chest, his back, his thighs, his calves – many of them the only remaining imprints left in the universe of the aliens whose lives he took, all of them permanent markers of what he was, what they made him to be, what they _took from him_.

He broke. His vision blurred beyond recognition and his chest rattled with the struggle of his breaths. The sheer overwhelming sense of _loss_ was like a void in the center of his chest, making him feel carved out and hollow. Empty, save for the sensation of being slowly crushed. Every now and then, small noises would wring themselves forcefully from his throat. He couldn’t stop crying. It was like he was bleeding and it wouldn’t clot. 

“Shiro?”

His gasps ground to a stop in his throat. Only the tears and shaking continued.

A single footstep tentatively came toward him. “Shi… Shiro?”

_No._

“L-L-Lance,” he coughed, and then his throat locked up. He blinked away his tears and shook his head, gasping in a breath. 

“What… What… I don’t…”

Another footstep. Shiro saw him out of the corner of his vision; Lance was wide-eyed and ruffled, wearing his robe and slippers. A hesitant hand was slowly rising and drifting toward him. Shiro shuddered and ground out, guttural, pleading, “ _Don’t t-touch me_.”

Lance snatched his hand back and stepped away. He wrung his hands instead. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.

Shiro couldn’t answer him. He sure as fuck didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even know what he was doing. He was powerless and pathetic, unable to get up off the floor and stop crying in front of Lance, who was getting more and more tense with each passing second. He was _scaring him_ , god, of course he was.

Eventually Lance ran off. Shiro couldn’t bring himself to do anything else, so he just sat there.

He had no idea how much time had passed, but the urgent _fwip fwip fwip_ of Lance’s slippers returned with the decisive thudding of boots. When the second figure kneeled down beside him, he looked up to see Coran, already dressed in his uniform, looking tired and gentle and patient.

“Hello, my boy. You don’t have to talk, but I’m going to ask you some questions. I only need you to nod or shake your head, all right?”

Shiro swallowed, and shakily nodded.

“Are you hurt?”

He shook his head.

“Do you know where you are?”

He nodded.

“Can you move?”

He hesitated.

Coran hummed and rephrased. “Would you like to go somewhere more private?”

Shiro wiped at his eyes and sniffled, nodding.

Coran smiled at him, then got back to his feet. As he grabbed a glass and began filling it with water from the sink, he turned to Lance and said, “You did a good job, son. Now go on and try to get some sleep before the others wake up.”

Lance glanced rapidly back and forth between the two, then hesitantly nodded. He slowly walked towards the door, gave one last look over his shoulder at Shiro, then left.

Coran kneeled back down beside him and handed him the glass of water. It was perfectly lukewarm, which Shiro was grateful for as he sipped at it. When he finished it off with a few decisive gulps, Coran took it and put it back in the sink before offering him his hand. Shiro wiped the last of the moisture from the corner of his eyes and took it.

\--

He couldn’t remember the trip there, but they both ended up in the Lion Hub. Black’s eyes immediately glinted and he could feel her filter through his mind with a low, comforting rumble that settled in his chest, like a purr. He ducked his head against the wave of guilt that washed over him.

Coran held out his hand again. “Don’t stop now, my boy. Come on.”

Shiro bit his lip and allowed Coran to shepherd him towards Black, who lowered her head and opened her maw to allow them inside the cockpit. He walked to the pilot’s chair and sat down, feeling extraordinarily small outside of his armor (and warm, thanks to Black heating the seat and turning on her heaters). Coran sat on one of the side panels, leaned forward, and waited. 

Time passed.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro whispered, hoarse.

Coran furrowed his brow. “What for?”

He hung his head. “I don’t deserve to be a Paladin.”

“What in the cosmos makes you think _that?_ ” 

Shiro ground his teeth, then dragged his hand down his face. “You’ll hate me if I tell you.” He glanced over at Coran, who looked wry and skeptical, a finely manicured brow arched high toward his hairline.

“Doubtful.”

Shiro grimaced and looked away. “I’m not… a good person,” he said, quietly.

Coran sighed. “I’m inclined to argue with you that you’re quite the contrary, but please, make your case. I’ll be quiet.”

After a long moment, Shiro finally took a deep breath. “When I was a prisoner of the Galra, I was in the gladiatorial faction. They… they made us fight. Those of us who fought, lived. Those of us who didn’t… were killed. So I fought.” When Coran didn’t say anything, he continued. “In the beginning, I could get away with a lot. I acted cocky and bloodthirsty, and I managed to take down dozens of opponents with non-lethal wounds, because it was enough to satisfy them. But- but then it wasn’t.”

He forced himself to count the number of symbols running across Black’s interface. Absently, he murmured, “There was this one alien, they were a sort of bear-like race… their name was Mizari. They were. They were kind- to me. They took me under their wing after Matt was taken away. They stopped me from killing myself. And then they stopped me from becoming a monster.” He closed his eyes and took in a shaky breath. “The guards took me away from them and all the others. I wasn’t allowed to socialize anymore. I never saw anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me after they put me in isolation. I had to scrap together my old group’s fates through guard gossip.” He stared blankly for a long moment. “They had me fighting the higher-tier gladiators. They were- they were too skilled, I couldn’t incapacitate them, and that- that was the first time I killed.” His voice began cracking. “They weren’t evil. They were just trying to survive, like I was, but I… I…”

His voice fell into a monotone. “I killed so many that the druids took notice. They started grooming me. I was rewarded when I killed and punished when I spared. When I started hurting myself on purpose, they tortured me, so I stopped. I fought more and more savage opponents and killed them, and then they took my body and dissected me like a frog and took things out and put things in and cut off my lower arm.” He slowly lifted his gaze to the overhead lights. “My first kill with the prosthetic was Mizari.”

He heard Coran make a soft noise.

“And you wanna know the worst part of it all?” Shiro chuckled as tears returned to his eyes, half-hysterical. “It took Mizari for me to realize that I was enjoying it. That I liked killing. That I liked my masters’ praise. That I wanted to become their weapon.” He let out an agonized, wheezing laugh and pulled his knees back to his chest, grabbing a fistful of hair. “What do you have to say about _that_ , Coran?”

When he turned to look at Coran’s face, he was expecting disgust. Shock. Anger. All he saw instead was tired sadness.

“I think that I’m proud of you,” Coran said, gently.

Shiro blinked.

“You _survived_ ,” he continued. “You did what you had to so you could live to the next day. You had to do terrible things to get there, but Shiro, what was the alternative? What would the Galra have done if you refused to kill? If you _disobeyed_ , even?”

Shiro blinked again, and tears ran down his cheeks. His voice quaked. “ _I should have died_.”

“Shiro, _no_.” Coran left his seat on the side-panel and kneeled beside the chair. “I don’t blame you for thinking the way you did in the Galra’s grasp. You said it yourself, they _groomed_ you, manipulated you, tortured you! So your brain coped the only way it knew how.”

“Because I wasn’t strong enough,” he sobbed.

“ _No_. You living, you choosing to survive, took infinitely greater strength than dying would have. By living, you ensured that you could help people in the future. By living, you lived for Matt, and Samuel, and Keith. By living, you became a Paladin of Voltron, you joined our family, and now you are _saving_ countless lives throughout the universe. Your life is a precious, beautiful thing, and it _should not be lost_.”

“But it’s _not_ ,” Shiro whispered. “I don’t deserve to be a Paladin. I don’t deserve Black. How am I supposed to be leading the others in the fight against the Galra when they _broke me?_ ”

Coran’s brow lowered. “Shiro, you are not broken. If the Galra had broken you, you’d be serving them right now, but you’re not. You _bent_. You are not the same man as you were before, and there’s no way for you to go back, but son, you have to recognize that what you’ve done and the things you’ve survived make you who you are now. Allura and I do not expect you to be the avatar of the perfect Black Paladin. We expect you to be _Shiro_. We trust and love you because we know that you care – about Voltron, about the kids, about the people of the universe, and that’s _all we ask_. If you still doubt your worth as a Paladin, reach out to Black right now and see how she feels.”

Shiro took a deep breath and opened himself to Black. Her presence in his mind was heavy, the weight of her thoughts manifesting into a soft pressure in his temples. She filled his mind with images of her and Zarkon back when he was the Black Paladin, young and vibrant and smiling beside the other Paladins. He felt the rolling waves of affectionate devotion she felt for him then. Then he felt as she let herself be used by him to kill the Red and Green Paladins. He felt as she abandoned herself to Zarkon, making her turn on Red when she lunged to avenge her Paladin. He felt her helplessness when Zarkon commanded her to destroy an Altean fleet, then a city of innocents, then a planet. He felt it as, each time, she knew that she could eject him, but her confusion and terror and the fact that he was all she’d ever known made her fail. 

Their feelings of guilt, grief, and agony mingled together and twined into a single thread. He pressed his consciousness to hers to comfort her at the same time she pressed her consciousness to his: _I understand. You are not a monster. I’m sorry._ The weight lifted off of his chest and her soft rumbling purr resumed.

He blinked hard and came back to the cockpit with Coran, who was smiling gently. Shiro slowly uncurled and let his feet fall back to the floor. 

“I do not blame you, just as I do not blame her,” Coran murmured.

He took another deep breath, then wiped at his eyes and finally, finally smiled. “Thank you, Coran,” he said softly.

Coran perched himself on the edge of the chair and pulled him into a hug, which Shiro gladly returned, squeezing him tightly and tucking his face into Coran’s shoulder. When they finally let go, Coran ruffled a hand through his damp hair and quipped, “You’d better hurry and make yourself presentable for breakfast. I’m pretty sure it’s already started!” He shooed Shiro out of the chair with a “Go on! Hop hop!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on this fic for a little while, but the second half (aftermath and recovery) has always given me a ridiculous amount of trouble. Therefore, I decided that I should go ahead and split it into two parts and publish the first half because I'm actually really proud of this. 
> 
> The second half, meanwhile, is undergoing a full rewrite.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro has a moment with each member of the Voltron team in the aftermath of his breakdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but I had a ton of college papers to write, so this went on the back-burner. Also, rewriting is _hard_.
> 
> I'm also very glad that I put this in the "Voltron Angst" series, because sheesh.
> 
> (I make a reference to [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9808877/chapters/22197665) in this section, which takes place in the same 'verse and acts as a kind of prequel. You don't have to read it to make sense of this fic at all, but I like to think it enhances the experience.)

Breakfast was an ordeal.

Coran’s patient attention and his even deeper bond with Black were enough to bring him back from the edge, but they didn’t heal him overnight. He didn’t want to… stop existing anymore, but the knowledge that he had killed so many, had _wanted_ to kill, was still heavy on his shoulders. Even worse, thinking about those days had brought out both his anxiety and his dysphoria in full-force, but the universe wasn’t going to stop for him. The Olkari would finish the mega-teludav any day now, and with it, their final assault on Zarkon would commence. Before that, though, he still had to sit down for breakfast with Allura and the Paladins and pretend that he wasn’t stripped down to his core.

He’d dried and combed his hair, washed his face, put on his prosthetic, and changed into his regular outfit before heading down to the dining table. Everyone was already eating, laughing, talking, and joking animatedly with each other when he got there – except for Lance.

Everyone turned toward him when he appeared in the doorway; Allura perked up and smiled. “Shiro! It’s about time you joined us! Come, sit, we kept your food warm!”

While Shiro sat down, Hunk jumped up and swiftly fetched a plate from the Altean equivalent of a microwave, then set it down in front of him with a flourish. “I decided to invent a special recipe this morning because I couldn’t find Coran,” Hunk declared, standing up straight and puffing out his chest while planting his hands on his hips. “I call it ‘ _Egg and Sausage Substitute Skillet a la Space_.’”

Shiro quirked an eyebrow, then grabbed his fork and took a bite of what definitely seemed like eggs, sausage, hash browns, and sliced vegetables, only neon green and purple. He froze and stopped chewing, a tear coming to his eye.

“Oh my god,” he whispered, muffled. Hunk beamed like the sun.

While Shiro scooped three more forkfuls into his mouth, Coran waved a finger at Hunk and praised, “I daresay that I’m all right with my impeccable culinary skills being shown up by such genius! You, my boy, have a way with transformative biochemistry that I haven’t seen since… ever!” Hunk sat down and blushed, prompting the others to smile and pile on their own praise.

With the group’s attention finally off of him, Shiro allowed himself to breathe. He chewed and savored the flavors, rolling them around his tongue, using them to ground himself. Despite the alien ingredients, it didn’t taste alien. Hunk’s dish… somehow, the boy managed to make it taste _almost Earth_. It reminded Shiro of tiny diners on road trips across Arizona with the Garrison’s honors club. Every time he took a bite, he tried to remember a detail. There was one diner in a sleepy town that the school van stopped at with various alien conspiracy paraphernalia on the walls, including a classic ‘I WANT TO BELIEVE’ poster. He took another bite and smiled. Bilal had wrinkled his nose at all of the food containing meat and dairy and ordered a single plain baked potato. Sharon ordered a meat lover’s skillet in retaliation. He took another bite and huffed. Ugh, Sharon. It was because of her that he ordered a kosher meal so that Matt wouldn’t have to eat al-

_I’m not going to make it!_

_I WANT BLOOD!_

Shiro blanched.

Appetite gone, Shiro held his napkin over his mouth to hide his grimace and forced himself to swallow. He reached for his water glass and caught Lance staring at him – the boy quickly looked away, but Shiro’s stomach sank.

After a short deep breathing exercise to stop himself from shaking, Shiro managed to coax himself to fill another fork. Pidge was talking excitedly about how Slav inspired her to do more research on interdimensional theory and how the fabric of reality could be multi-layered, which was piquing Keith’s interest enough to actually make him smile. Shiro felt a little better at the sight – the boy had been high-strung lately, too consumed with their upcoming mission to let himself be a kid for a minute.

He steadily managed mouthful after mouthful of Hunk’s breakfast as the others continued talking. He kept catching Lance staring at him, however, and if he wasn’t staring at Shiro, he was aimlessly pushing around his food with a blank expression. That wouldn’t do.

Shiro waited until the next time Lance went back to pushing his food around his plate to stealthily scoop up a large forkful. While the others were distracted, he carefully pulled back the fork with his finger, then catapulted his food to smack straight into Lance’s face.

Everyone whirled around to look at Lance as he reared back and looked rapidly around for the culprit, then caught sight of Shiro’s hand still poised over his empty fork.

“Lance,” Shiro deadpanned. “Eat your food.”

Keith snorted and covered his mouth. Everyone save for Hunk began laughing and Lance sputtered before snarking, “ _You_ eat _your_ food!” Hunk turned to him with big puppy-dog eyes and asked him if he added something Lance couldn’t eat, and while Lance began to enthusiastically reassure him, Shiro forced down another bite.

By the time the group was done with breakfast and getting up to put away their plates in the washer, Shiro’s nerves were shot. He needed to _do something_ that could take him away from his thoughts.

The moment he put away his plate, he marched out of the room without a word.

\--

Allura chased him down in the hallway after he fled the kitchen. 

“Shiro!” she called, running up behind him. “Shiro!”

Shiro turned around before she got close and smiled, pained. Allura’s eyes widened and she immediately slowed, then walked calmly up to him. “Shiro,” she prompted gently, “are you all right?”

Shiro swallowed, thickly. “No, Princess. I’m not.” 

Her brow furrowed and she tilted her head; a strand of white hair drifted down from her bangs and settled along her nose. The piercing blue of her eyes was too intense. He looked away from her.

“Did something happen?”

Matt’s terrified face was scorched into his brain alongside Lance’s from last night, and both were threatening to bleed into the memory of Mizari. He could feel bile threaten to rise in his throat.

Shiro licked his lips and swallowed again. “I had an episode last night. It was- …It was bad.”

“Oh,” she said, softly. “I see… Well, maybe when we train today-”

“That’s the thing, Princess. I don’t think I can- I-” He hung his head. “I can’t train with you anymore. At least… at least not today.”

Allura’s expression shattered; she curled in on herself slightly, crestfallen.

He immediately took her hands and squeezed them, just as he did that fateful night several months ago. “I know that this is important to us both, and I promise that I’ll figure something else out. I…” he dipped his head, slightly, and looked to the side. He inhaled through his nose, held it, then breathed out, slowly. 

Ever since he’d sat with Allura through a breakdown in the empty AI core and helped her bleed out all of her pain, grief, anxiety, and dysphoria, the two of them began meeting in the training room after breakfast for fitness training. Usually, they’d go through the same repetitive sets every day – cardio, legs, abdomen, and arms – always ending with Shiro meditating on Allura’s back as she did one-armed push-ups. The memories of his time as a gladiator were too heavy and thick in his bones, however, and almost all of the exercises mirrored what he did in his cell – what he did in front of his masters. The memories that came to him the night before tainted his and Allura’s ritual. The mere thought of doing them today – or in the foreseeable future – made him physically sick.

Fitness training was a concept that he was no longer comfortable with, but he still wanted to do something with his time that would force him to remain present and connected to his body, something that would make him focus yet ease his anxiety at the same time. Most of all, he wanted something that would connect him to Earth – to _his parents_ – that the Galra never tainted, that even the Garrison couldn’t touch. __

Ballet was the only thing that met all those requirements.

“I… I think I have an idea.” 

\--

Shiro looked around the open expanse of the training room and tried to envision it as his old dance studio in Japan. 

It was ironic, in a sort of cruel way; ballet used to be a nasty trigger for his dysphoria, and it still made him feel uneasy, but it was also inescapably linked to the image of his parents’ smiling faces, overflowing with love and pride. It was better than the memory of when, after two days of unexplained and agonizing abdominal cramps, his menstrual cycle came back from the dead in the middle of an arena battle after six weeks of no testosterone, drenching the crotch of his prisoner uniform in blood. After that, ballet really lost its dysphoric edge.

He and Allura put down their bags containing their battle uniforms (just in case), shoes, and water bottles along the wall and walked out to the center of the floor. Instead of the loose tank-tops and shorts that they usually wore, they were each in a medi-suit, which was the closest thing they could find in the Castle to a leotard.

Allura clasped her hands behind her back and sucked in a cheek, tense and awkward. “So… do we still stretch the same?”

Shiro gave her a small grin to settle her nerves and nodded. “Yes. The stretching is the same.” To prove his point, he lowered himself to the ground and stretched out a leg, then slowly extended himself to do a toe-touch. Allura followed his lead.

The silence stretched between them for about a minute before Allura gently prompted, “So, you said this ‘ballet’ is a kind of formal human dance?”

Shiro hummed and wrinkled his brow as he switched to stretching both legs at once. “Well, ballet can be as casual as you want to make it. It just has a tradition of being… grand.”

Allura pushed herself up to begin lunges. “Is it gender specific? I know you feel… uneasy about it.”

Shiro tried to time his lunges with Allura’s so their conversation wouldn’t be awkward. “No, anyone of any gender can do ballet, but… Well, again, traditionally it’s associated with women. Um.” He faltered for a moment as he reached for the memories. It seemed like two centuries ago rather than two decades.

Allura glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled, subdued. “Forgive my prying, but… you did ballet traditionally? I’m struggling to understand why you think this is a good idea.”

“It’s fine,” Shiro said automatically. They finished their lunging and instead spread out their stances to do side-stretches. “My parents signed me up for ballet classes when I was five years old, and because I only realized I was trans when I was thirteen, it was an all-girls class. I’d like to think I became halfway decent in the seven years I was there. I was in about a dozen recitals. Papa was an optometrist and Mom was a psychologist, but at least one of them made it to every show.” He smiled softly. “They were so proud of me. I grew close with my instructor, too.”

Muscles warmed up and loose, Shiro stood up straight and took a deep breath. Allura clasped her hands behind her back and looked at him, expectantly. Shiro blinked and stared back, blankly.

Allura quirked an eyebrow and chuckled. “Well?”

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. “I actually have no idea how to _teach_ ballet. Also, there’s no balance-bars or mirrors in here.”

“Oh, come now. What’s the worst that could happen?”

The _snap_ of Emiko’s foot and his instructor carrying her away crying and screaming to the paramedics flashed through his mind, suddenly, swiftly followed by the _snap_ of his own foot when he landed a kick wrong to an armored alien in the arena, which bled into a dozen more memories of bones-

He jerked at the feeling of soft hands slowly wrapping around his own and squeezing, hard.

“… back to me. Shiro?”

Shiro frowned and looked away from her. “I’m sorry, Princess.”

Allura ducked her head into his vision. “Hey, none of that. Let’s think of something else.” She straightened again, and Shiro mustered the will to look at her. She let go of his hands and instead rested one on his elbow. “You said you were close with your instructor? Tell me about her.”

The wrinkled, sharp face of his instructor floated back to the front of his memory. He smiled, despite himself.

“Sakurai-sama was a rigid, strict, harsh woman in her early forties whose personal mission was to ensure each little girl would reach national fame in Japan by the time she was seventeen. The reason why I loved her so much was that our fame didn’t have to come from ballet – she drove us to flourish in whatever field we fell in love with. She wrote my letter of recommendation to the Galaxy Garrison.”

Allura’s eyes glinted with mischief as she stepped back out of his space. “You _do_ strike me as a teacher’s pet.” He gaped and clutched his chest, mock-offended. She giggled, then seemed to think for a moment. “Maybe we don’t _both_ have to do ballet. Maybe you can just… show me ballet, and I can show you an Altean dance?”

He raised his brow and smirked. “Are you saying our new training sessions are going to be a dance club?”

“Dance club sounds more fun than fight club.”

“Point taken.”

After taking a deep breath, he began moving.

He decided to go slow at first. He focused more on simple, controlled movement and poses than flamboyant action. He whispered the beat of his steps out loud to drive him forward and keep him focused, slowly working his way outwards towards the edges of the room in a spiral.

After about five minutes, feeling more confidant, he decided he could start jumping. He sprang from his current position and began making his way to the opposite wall in a series of twirls, leaps, and tight shuffling springs. When he reached the end, he pushed off with both feet and split in the air, landing on one foot and pirouetting, then slowly spiraled downwards until he was on the ground. He slowly rose to his feet and raised his arms over his head, then started moving again, matching the impact of his feet to the tune of a song he remembered from Earth that had filtered back slowly to his consciousness with each step.

He’d worked up a good sweat and his muscles were well-worked, but in the pleasant, grounding sensation that these sessions were supposed to give him. He danced back over to Allura and finished with a bow.

She clapped rapidly and beamed at him. “That was so much more beautiful than I imagined it would be!” Shiro huffed and side-eyed her, teasing. After a few seconds, she realized what that sounded like. “ _Oh!_ No, I just meant- that’s the most gra- uh, I’ve only ever seen the others dance with wild thrashing or something called the ‘Macarena,’ and I just assumed-”

Shiro laughed and waved his hands to get her to settle down. “There’s more to Earth than just raving and the Macarena. Each of us Paladins come from a different culture full of all sorts of different dances.” He paused to think a moment. “Ballet is actually French. I’ve also danced in over a dozen Bon Odori, and there’s also the Nihon buyo, Noh Mai, Kabuki…” A sudden pang of homesickness washed over him and he trailed off. He shook his head. “Anyway. Surely Altea had a diverse spectrum of cultural dances?”

Allura hummed in thought. “Altea… Due to our species’s social and non-confrontational nature, we gradually homogenized into a mono-culture under my family’s rule. It was a remarkably dynamic and diverse culture, but it was one culture all the same. We had many slow and graceful dances such as your ballet, but there is this one dance that Altean girls learn for their rite of passage and then perform in every Altean New Year festival. I think you’ll enjoy it! It’s quite fun! I just need to find some swords.”

“ _Swords?_ ”

\--

He and Allura finished up shortly before lunch, just as winded and sweaty as they were after their fitness training sessions, their muscles warm and loose and relaxed, their minds honed and quiet. They high-fived each other and left for their rooms; Shiro freshened up a little and got dressed (again), then went out to hunt down Hunk.

He found him in the kitchen, as he expected. He was pulling out an assortment of pots and pans absentmindedly with a deep-set frown weighing down his expression.

Shiro cleared his throat to announce his presence. Hunk jumped and dropped the skillet – Shiro braced himself for the loud _BANG_ against the metal floor, then hurried to pick it up for him.

“Oh, uh- Shiro! Um, hey. Thanks.” Hunk accepted the skillet and quickly put it on the counter, then wrung his hands. “Is something wrong? What’s up?”

Shiro’s brow furrowed and rose slightly. “I feel like I should be asking you that question. Are you okay, Hunk? You were practically bouncing this morning.”

Hunk let out a long, slow sigh and stared at his assortment of cookware. “I dunno. There’s just, like, a bad atmosphere with everyone. It’s like, either something bad happened and I missed it or something bad is _going_ to happen, and _that one_ I know really well, because once we reach the Olkari planet it’s all Zarkon from there and the Blade of Marmora are _radiating_ anxiety and the stakes-”

“ _Breathe_ , Hunk,” Shiro said, softly, resting a firm hand on his shoulder. Hunk stiffened and sucked in a breath through his nose, then slowly let it out through his mouth. He repeated it two more times while Shiro rubbed a small circle on his back with his left hand. When Hunk finally nodded, Shiro stopped, but didn’t remove his hand. “We’re in the last lull before a big battle, and most of us have nothing to do. Of course we’re all anxious and restless.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an anxiety sponge and I’m soaking it _all_ up.”

“Cooking helps you de-stress, right?”

“Yeah, but I can’t cook _all day_ or else we’d run out of food.” Hunk pouted and ducked his head.

Shiro scratched Hunk’s back for a second. “There’s other ways to cope besides cooking.”

“I know,” Hunk moped. “I just… cooking is one coping mechanism I can do alone. Otherwise, I want to do things with other people, because being around people helps.”

“Things like… dancing?”

Hunk wrinkled his nose. “Nah. I want my heartrate _down_ , not up.”

 _Well, there goes that option._ “I’m sure we can think of something, later.”

Hunk looked up at Shiro. “We?”

Shiro smiled down at him. “Yeah, ‘we.’” Hunk’s grin seeped some of the tension out of his face, and Shiro’s heart warmed at the sight. “So walk me through what you’re making, here.”

“Oh! Yeah! I’m thinking about making fish-fillet with herbs and sauce.” Hunk happily went over to the pantry to get out the ingredients, leaving Shiro to hover awkwardly by the sink.

“Uh… Would you like some help?”

Hunk leaned out from behind the pantry door to beam at him. “Sure!”

“Um. I feel like I should clarify that by ‘help,’ I mean ‘I burn Pizza Rolls in the microwave.’”

Hunk leaned out from behind the pantry door again, an eyebrow quirked up toward his hairline. “Wait, wait, wait… You’re like, 25 years old and _you don’t know how to cook?_ ”

Shiro smiled and shrugged, meek.

“ _Oh_ -ho, no, no. You are gonna _learn_ today.”

\--

Shiro learned how to boil water. As for the rest of it, he’d only earned a tight, forced smile and a strained ‘That was good for your first time’ from Hunk. 

Hunk, for whatever reason, put Shiro in charge of the sauce, and went out of his way to coach him through every step of making it. He only had to run and take over from him three times, and the sauce actually came out edible! Chunky and gelatinous, but edible. Shiro was rather proud of himself, but Hunk seemed fatigued, so when he asked if there was anything else he could do, Hunk sent him off to fetch Lance for lunch while hunched protectively over the fish.

It was actually for the best, Shiro figured. He had never reconciled with Lance after last night, and for all the boy knew, he wasn’t any better from his breakdown. Dancing with Allura and cooking with Hunk had done a lot to clear his mind and keep him firmly rooted in the present, and he felt like he was finally ready to sit down and talk about what happened.

He found Lance on the control deck, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the map-holo. Stars, asteroids, and galaxies floated and slowly rotated around him, bathing the room in a soft blue glow. His jacket was pulled tight around his shoulders, and he was staring blankly at the stars floating by. He didn’t seem to notice the door. Shiro sighed and walked over to him, making sure his footsteps were pronounced so he wouldn’t startle him.

He finally reached the platform Lance was sitting on and lowered himself down to sit beside him. Lance didn’t look at him, just kept staring at the stars. 

After a long silence, Shiro finally ventured, “You didn’t tell the others what happened last night.”

Lance grimaced. “It’s really hard not to, y’know.”

Shiro frowned. “Thank you,” he said, quietly. “I never wanted any of you to see me like that. I don’t even want you guys to know it happens at all.”

Lance finally looked away from the holo-map to the ground and shifted, tensing.

“It’s just…” Shiro continued. “I don’t want you worrying. Especially not when you have so much to worry about already.”

Lance looked up at him, then, and his expression was drawn and tight. “Well. I saw.”

Shiro let out a slow sigh. “Yeah… You saw.”

Another awkward silence dragged on for a minute. Shiro cleared his throat and said, “Thank you for getting help. You saved me from the worst of it last night.”

Lance furrowed his brow. “So that wasn’t even the worst of it?”

Shiro huffed a dry laugh. “Whatever would have happened if you hadn’t found me… wouldn’t have been good.”

“You still weren’t completely over it at breakfast.”

Shiro hesitated. “I had some memories come back. I didn’t really… want to be around you guys because of them.”

Lance looked him in the eye, expectant. “So why did you?”

It was Shiro’s turn to grimace. He glanced down. “I didn’t… want the others to worry. Not so close to our siege on Zarkon’s dreadnought.”

“That’s stupid.” Shiro looked up, stunned. Lance sat up straight and crossed his arms. “Did I ever tell you about my brother-in-law Jesús?” He didn’t wait for Shiro to answer before he continued, “He was an infantryman in the army. When he came back home, he was exactly the same as he was before he deployed, but we knew that he saw things. Everyone begged him to get help, especially my big sister, but he always refused. After about two months of smiley, ‘normal’ Jesús, he started turning… _mean_.” He looked away. “I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Shiro pushed down the nauseous feeling in his stomach and scooted closer. He rested a gentle hand on Lance’s shoulder and softly coaxed, “Hey,” until Lance met his eyes. “I _am_ getting help. Allura and I have been helping each other for a very long while now, and Coran’s been there for us both. _I’m_ supposed to be there for _you_ , so I don’t get you guys involved in my head stuff. Besides…” he squeezed Lance’s shoulder a little, “I think I scared you last night.”

Lance bit his lip and stared at Shiro’s vest zipper. “I never saw you like that before… It really freaked me out…”

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said, quietly.

Lance huffed and looked back up at him. “S’not your fault. It’s… it was about the Galra, right?”

“Isn’t everything?” Shiro deadpanned.

That got a surprised snort out of Lance. _Success_. “Can’t we, y’know… help you somehow? Even if it’s just a little?”

“Not letting me get recaptured by the Galra is a huge help, so if you could keep doing that, I’d appreciate it.”

Lance blinked and squinted at him. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

Shiro just smiled.

Lance nodded a little, satisfied with his conclusion. “ _Mm_ , yeah, no, that’s just your sense of humor.”

“’Atta boy.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Lance scoffed, rolling his eyes and shoving Shiro’s arm off of him. Shiro chuckled and shoved him back. Lance looked at him with a sudden, bright gleam in his eye and a wide grin. Shiro met it with a smirk of his own and pulled Lance in for a hug.

Lance squeezed him tightly, and Shiro returned it. Finally, they let go.

“I’m serious, though,” Lance continued, his grin dimming substantially. “If you… If you want to talk about it…”

“If I want to talk about it, I’ll go to Coran,” he said, flatly.

Lance looked him up and down, his grin gone entirely. “Is it really so bad that you can’t trust us with it?”

Shiro sighed and lowered his gaze. He suddenly felt so tired. “It’s not about trust, Lance.”

“Well, I think it’s stupid that you try and protect us from what happened to you. Maybe if we knew, we could help.”

“Lance, you’re sixteen. There’s just some things in the universe sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t have to know.”

“I’ve killed people.” Shiro jerked his head up and turned to look at him. Lance’s expression was… pinched. “You think we don’t know that those ships we blow up aren’t filled with Galra? We’re not babies. It’s like, yeah, sure, they’re Galra, but they’re still people. And we’ve killed hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. People.”

Now Shiro was very, _very_ tired. He reached out to Lance again and pulled him against his side. They rested there for a long moment. Finally, Shiro tried and failed to keep his voice from wavering when he said, “I’m just not ready.”

Lance wrapped an arm around him again. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

Shiro huffed, blowing some of Lance’s hair. He squeezed him one last time, then roughly shoved him off of him to stand up, earning him an indignant squawk. He reached out a hand and smiled, subdued. “I know that everything sucks, but you know what doesn’t suck?” Lance peered up at him with a wary, curious side-eye. “Hunk’s cooking.”

Lance immediately brightened. “Oh, hey, it’s lunch-time, isn’t it?” He took Shiro’s hand and pulled himself up, and the two of them hurried out of the control the room, the holo-map closing behind them.

\--

“Shiro?”

Shiro looked up from his holo-tablet detailing the mission plan to see Pidge standing in the doorway of the common room where he’d hidden once he was on his last spoon. He immediately set it aside once he saw the look on her face.

“Yes, Pidge? What’s wrong?”

Pidge hurried over to sit next to his left on the couch, where she immediately started stimming, rapidly rubbing her hands across her knees. Shiro knew not to touch her when she was like this, so he just leaned closer and waited patiently for her to voice what was wrong. Finally, she said, “I miss Matt and Dad.”

Shiro sighed. “I miss them, too, Pidge.”

She clenched her jaw for a moment and hugged herself, jiggling her leg instead of her hands. “I keep thinking about what the Galra might do to them if we lose. Or what they might do if we _win_.”

Shiro wanted to do nothing more than shut down, but Pidge needed him. He needed to dig in and grit it out, for her sake. “You can’t be thinking like that.”

“The probabilities are limitless. I keep running them through my head and I hate that I have no idea where they are and no way of knowing if they’re still alive, and what if they’re dead? What if Dad’s dead but Matt’s lost? What if Dad’s lost but Matt’s dead? What if Dad is at an execution work camp? What if Matt got recaptured? What if whatever faction took him is worse than the Galra? What if-?”

“Pidgeon,” Shiro forced out, using Matt’s nickname for her. She stuttered to a halt and looked at him, shocked. “ _Stop_. Say it with me.”

“What?”

“You’re telling all of your thoughts to stop and freeze. So say it with me:”

_“’Stop.’”_

He smiled at her. “Good. Now – may I touch you?” When she nodded, he gently placed his hand on her back; she leaned back against him. “Okay. Okay… Think about what we know as fact. What do we know?”

Pidge blinked. “Dad wasn’t dead two years ago. Matt wasn’t dead one month ago. Matt wasn’t with the Galra one month ago.”

“Anything else?”

A muscle in her jaw twitched. “Nothing as fact.”

“Is this enough data to form a hypothesis? Do we even know what our variables are?”

Pidge blinked, then took a deep breath, catching on to what he’s doing. “No.”

“Then we can’t make one yet. And if we can’t make one yet, any prediction or probability that comes to mind should be discarded. So picture all of those what-ifs as pieces of paper… and let them go.”

Pidge took another deep breath, then closed her eyes to visualize it. After a minute, she opened them again and slumped. Shiro worked his hand through her hair, gently massaging her scalp.

“I hate feeling powerless,” she murmured.

“We’re not powerless,” he said, gently. “It’s just… we can only use our power in specific ways. In our case, it’s the final assault on Zarkon tomorrow.”

Pidge frowned deeper. “Slav says our probability of success is in the single digits.”

“ _Fuck_ Slav.”

Pidge stiffened and looked at him in awed surprise. Shiro peered down at her.

“Don’t tell your father I said that.”

She huffed an almost-laugh. “Matt was right… you _are_ a bad influence.”

“Matt said _what_ now?”

“Your third year of higher education in the Garrison. I was nine. He called you a ‘saucy minx’ who would corrupt my child brain with swears and memes.”

“I’m blocking him.”

Pidge gave him a weak chuckle. “So what do _you_ think our probability of success is?”

“I think…” he fought through a wave of inner panic and anxiety and screaming nerves, “we either win, or we don’t. That’s all there is to it. And I intend to win.” He looked down at her. “What about you?”

He saw some determination seep back into her. Her eyes glinted behind her glasses as she said, “Yeah.”

“Mm. Good.”

Silence stretched between them. Pidge slowly drifted into a half-doze as Shiro kept brushing his hand through her hair. Then: “Shiro?”

“Mhmm?”

“Do you feel the same way about finding Matt and Dad?”

Shiro took a long, deep breath. “Yes.”

“We either do, or we don’t? And you intend to find them?”

He gave her a tired grin. “You got it.”

Pidge smiled and settled against his side, closing her eyes and yawning.

“Hey Shiro?”

“Hm?”

Her brow furrowed and her hands curled into loose fists. “We’re going to kill Zarkon tomorrow. For Altea. For my family. And for you.”

Shiro’s eyes watered. He didn’t do anything else until Pidge’s breaths had slowed down to sleep; then, he carefully maneuvered her onto his back where she automatically clung to him like a koala, and carried her to her room.

\--

Shiro had run out of spoons as soon as Pidge’s door closed behind him, so he power-walked straight to his room, shut the door, locked it, laid down on the floor, and curled into a ball.

His connection to Black immediately stirred and he felt her consciousness stretch across his own again, her rumble-purr tingling up and down his awareness. She prevented him from dissociating, always forcing his vision to sharpen again when the bed-posts got blurry. He didn’t have enough left in him to feel anything, whether it be annoyance or gratitude.

Over the next half hour, Black kept purring, incessantly. It was like a small tremor that was slowly loosening the steel trap of his mind, making things start to slowly bleed out. A sudden sob burst from his throat, and then came tears. The next thing he knew, he was silently weeping over nothing in particular. Or maybe it was everything.

When a wave of nausea came, he found the strength to claw himself to the toilet and lean over it, but miraculously, nothing came up. He stayed there for another half-hour before finally clambering back to his feet to stumble to his bed, where he shed his clothes down to his boxers, discarded them on the floor, and curled up again under the covers. After only a minute, he took the sheet and blanket with him to the floor and rolled up in them. He took the time to take off his prosthetic and throw it on the bed, then laid down and cried again.

After an hour, the tears finally stopped, and he just laid there. After another hour, there was a knock on the door. He did nothing.

The knock came again, louder.

THUMP. “ _Shiro, it’s me, and I know you’re in there!_ ”

Black gave him a prompting growl. He growled back, then grabbed his (dry) pajama pants and pulled them on en route to the door, finally getting them over his hips before pushing the unlock icon on the door panel. He didn’t even touch the hand-plate before the door was open and a stone-faced Keith was standing on the other side, wearing only his black T-shirt and jeans. Shiro turned around and went back to his blankets without a word.

Keith stepped across the threshold and then stopped, as if he was taking precautions against the door shutting on him. He clutched a lidded bowl in his hands as he looked at the whirlwind of clothes, shoes, socks, and blankets on the floor. “So you really _did_ have a shit day.”

Shiro folded the blankets back over himself in response.

Frowning, Keith shut the door and locked it behind him, then walked over to sit down on the floor beside Shiro. “You missed dinner,” he said, awkwardly.

Shiro stared at a point past his left shoe. In response, Keith set the bowl down and slowly pushed it closer and closer to Shiro’s face until it was mushed against his nose. Shiro shot him a half-hearted glare and sat up to lean back against the wall, resituating his blankets to wear like a shawl.

Keith was the only member of the entire team to have seen him shirtless both pre- and post-surgery and pre- and post-Galra. As a result, his semi-little-brother would stare at his chaotic smattering of scars with an expression of mixed unbridled rage and crushing guilt – like he was doing right now at his uncovered legs. It drove Shiro absolutely mad, so he scoffed and whipped the lid off the bowl to distract him.

It worked. Keith seemed to be struggling to assemble his thoughts as Shiro balanced the bowl in his lap, then grabbed the accompanying fork in his hand to start spiraling up a forkful of pastel-pink alien spaghetti.

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice.” Shiro had no idea what he was talking about, so he kept eating. “You had an episode last night, right?” The fork paused halfway to his mouth. Keith frowned and looked down at his fists. “I never notice.”

Shiro glared at him and grunted around a mouthful of spaghetti.

“I know you’re the ‘big brother’ but that should support my _point_ ,” Keith countered, as if Shiro had actually spoken. “Brothers are supposed to be there for each other, and I keep… messing up.”

Shiro sighed and rolled his eyes.

“It’s exactly because you try and hide it from everyone else that I should notice!”

Shiro quirked an eyebrow at him and tilted his head slightly, side-eyeing him as he bit into another forkful.

“I’d… I dunno, I’d… talk to you about it? Actually be there for you instead of doing random stupid shit?”

Shiro mock-gagged.

Keith flicked him in the ear. “ _Dick_.” Shiro winced, then stuck his tongue out at him. Keith shot one back only angrier and glared daggers at the door until Shiro was done with his bowl.

_Well, I think it’s stupid that you try and protect us from what happened to you. Maybe if we knew, we could help._

_I’ve killed people._

_We’re not babies._

Shiro cleared his throat once, then twice. “It’s… not your fault,” he rasped, his throat croaky and dry. “That you don’t notice.”

Keith looked at him, his expression suddenly open and surprised. He got up and fetched Shiro’s water bottle from his bag, then swapped it with Shiro for his empty bowl, which he closed back up and shoved off to the side of the room. “What do you mean?”

Shiro unscrewed the cap and took two large swigs, then braced the bottle between his knees to put the cap back on. “I… have a long track record of neglecting you guys. I only act like I’m your commanding officer and superior, but that’s not all we’re supposed to be. I’m also supposed to be your friend. And you and me, Keith? We’re supposed to be brothers.”

Keith’s mouth dropped open slightly, then he closed it. He crossed his legs underneath him and said, “So… does this mean you’re going to… let us help? Let _me_ help?”

Shiro hummed and hung his head. He took the time to take a few drinks of water, then closed the cap again and said, “I still maintain that I think you guys are too young to know this stuff, but… you’re too young for a lot of things you’re going through right now.” Shiro closed his eyes and slowly inhaled, then breathed out. He opened them again and looked at Keith. He worked his mouth a moment, then managed, “Last night I remembered more of my time as a slave.” He swallowed. Black renewed her purring tenfold when the memories threated to take him, and he clung to her consciousness, sending her thoughts of praise and thankfulness. “They were brainwashing me to be loyal to them. To want to kill for them. And it worked. I had to kill a friend to realize that I _wanted_ to be their weapon.” Tears fell down his cheeks and he choked down a sob.

It was the watered down version, but Keith still looked on the verge of tears. He clenched and unclenched his jaw several times, then said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“That you don’t hate me?”

Keith pushed himself up and crawled into his lap, knocking over the water bottle, then wrapped him tightly in a hug. Shiro clung to him and cried into his shoulder while Keith shook.

“I could never hate you, Shiro,” he murmured. “I only hate the fuckers who did this to you.”

Gradually, Keith’s squeezing and Black’s lapping waves of affection were enough to bring him back down. He took a deep, shuddering breath, then said, “I’m also worried about tomorrow.”

Keith sat back and looked at his face. He frowned and wiped the tears from his cheeks. “That’s obvious.”

Shiro smacked his side, and Keith smacked him back on reflex. Shiro sighed and elaborated, “I keep thinking about… what would happen if not all of us made it back.”

A thunderous expression appeared on Keith’s face. “ _None of us are dying_ ,” he ground out.

“You don’t know that,” Shiro said, dully.

“ _Stop_.” Keith hugged him again, only this time he hid his face in Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro tucked his nose into his hair. “Do you remember… back on Earth, after I adopted you and you moved in with me, how you used to get those night terrors?”

“ _Used_ to?” said Keith, muffled.

Shiro frowned at this new information, but continued anyway. “And you’d crawl into my bed and I’d hold you in my lap until we both fell asleep again?”

“Yeah?”

“What if… would you like to do that tonight?”

Keith peeked out enough to look at him. “I’d… I’d like that.”

An hour later, both of them were asleep on the bed, Shiro leaned back against the wall and Keith leaned back against his chest, both of them cocooned in blankets.

-

-

-

-

-

_“He’s gone.”_


End file.
